


Bloody Secrets

by cywscross



Series: SteterNetwork Monthly Prompts [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Fae & Fairies, Fae Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11828688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/cywscross
Summary: Stiles has silver in his veins.Peter could’ve done without finding out this way though.





	Bloody Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> For SteterNetwork’s August 2017 prompt: **Silver**.

 

It starts with a text.  Peter’s getting ready for bed when his phone buzzes with the first one.  He contemplates leaving it for tomorrow since there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s Derek, demanding his uncle’s aid like the miserable ingrate of a man-child that he is, or Stiles, who usually calls for lunch or questions about the latest subject he’s researching.

It could be Stiles.  And with the recent string of murders… Peter reaches for his phone.

It _is_ Stiles.

_:hey u awak:_

Peter blinks at the messages.  Stiles usually launches right into his questions when he has insomnia and likes to make Peter suffer along with him.  He quickly taps out, **_:Yes. Who needs beauty sleep when you look as good as I do?:_**

_:ha:_

Peter frowns.  **_:Is something wrong?:_**

_:kinda:_

_:think u cn cm pik me up:_

Peter’s already fishing out his keys.  Alarm bells are going off in his head.  **_:Yes, where are you?:_**

_:preserve:_

Great.

**_:Should I bring the first-aid kit?:_ **

_:no:_

_:yes?:_

Peter sighs.  **_:I’m on my way. Don’t die before I get there.:_**

_:no wrrys, il b fin:_

Peter makes sure to grab some extra bandages before heading out the door.

 

* * *

 

Peter drives as far as he can before parking and going the rest of the way on foot.

It doesn’t take long to track down Stiles.  There’s an odd scent in the air tonight, sweet like honeysuckles, and as Peter takes off towards the area where it gets positively saccharine, he starts finding patches of silver – liquid, but drying – staining bark and grass and dirt.

He stoops down beside one puddle, not touching but taking a closer look.  It’s thicker than water, like congealing blood, and he wonders if it’s from whatever creature Stiles must have bumped into.

Why Stiles was out here in the first place, especially without backup, without _Peter_ , is beyond him.

His phone vibrates again, this time with an incoming call, and Peter gets to his feet again as he takes it out.  “Stiles?”

_“Yeah, hey, are you close?”_

Well at least his words aren’t slurring together.  That’s something.

“Yes,” Peter replies, resuming his trek through the woods.  “What were you fighting?  It smells like a flower shop exploded here.”

There’s silence from Stiles’ end, stretching long enough to make Peter bristle.

 _“Listen,”_ Stiles finally says.  _“I need you to not freak out when you see me.”_

Peter almost groans.  “I don’t like where this is going, Stiles.”

 _“Yeah, well, it’s not like I had a choice in the matter either,”_ Stiles snaps back rather cryptically.  _“Just… I’m fine.  Or I will be.  There’s just… a few things I haven’t told you.  About me.  Which is fair because let’s face it, I only started not wanting to punch you in the face very recently.  And I wouldn’t have asked you to come tonight except… I didn’t know who else to call.”_

Peter doesn’t mention all the things he hears that Stiles doesn’t outright say.  He’s not sure if either of them are quite ready to put it all out there yet.  Still, something in his chest warms even as his gut tightens with worry and curiosity both, and he picks up his pace even more.

“Fine, I won’t ‘freak out’.  Please, who do you think you’re talking to anyway?  I should be almost there.  I can hear your heartbeat.”

_“Yeah, I can hear you.  Don’t step in the blood.  It’s slippery.”_

Stiles hangs up, and Peter glances at another splash of silver dripping from a bush.  So that _is_ blood then.

He ducks into the clearing ahead, only to find the place practically _drenched_ in silver liquid.  There are six messy carcasses strewn across the forest floor, and Stiles is sitting at the base of a tree, mostly using the trunk to prop himself up.

 Peter hurries over, and at first glance, he thinks that whatever Stiles was fighting must have bled on him when he killed them, but then he gets a second, far more detailed look, and…

“Yeah, hello,” Stiles says with a grim tilt to his smile.  When he bares his teeth, there’s silver smeared there too.  “Surprise!  I’m not exactly all human.”

Peter stares for a moment before slowly crouching down beside the boy.  There’s a gash above his eyebrow that’s leaking silver, cuts – deep and shallow – can be seen through the rips in his clothing and all of _those_ are oozing silver too, and Peter blanches when his gaze falls on Stiles’ right forearm – the one that Stiles has his left hand wrapped around – and realizes that the limb isn’t actually attached at the elbow.  It looks like someone chopped it off, and there’s so much silver gushing from the stump that Peter can’t actually see any skin.

“It’ll put itself back together,” Stiles grunts out, head thunking back against the tree behind him even as his eyes remain half-lidded and sharp on Peter’s face.  “I just need to hold it there for a while until the healing kicks in properly.  That fucking bitch tried to cut my head off from behind.  I was lucky.”

Lucky.  Of course.  Well, compared to losing a head, Peter supposes it is pretty lucky.

He rakes a critical eye over Stiles again.  There’s more silver – more blood – pooled in the hollow of his throat, and without conscious thought, he reaches out to tip Stiles’ chin up for a better look.

Half a second later, a hand closes around his wrist, and Stiles’ left arm drops to the grass with a wet splat.

Peter would cringe, mostly because it’s _Stiles’_ arm, but he’s more preoccupied by the claws – _not like werewolves_ , a corner of his mind notes, _longer, and narrower, a bit like the curved talons of an eagle_ – resting against one of the major arteries in his arm, a twitch of a muscle away from slicing right through his skin.

He pauses.  His eyes flick up to meet Stiles’, and for a long moment, neither of them looks away.

Then Stiles releases a huff of air and lets go, his whole body slumping back as his eyes fall shut.  Peter draws a careful breath of his own before resuming his inspection of Stiles’ wounds.

There are four long scratches scored diagonally along Stiles’ throat.  They’ll heal, probably even without scars, especially with Stiles’ implied supernatural healing factor, but something in Peter flares with outrage anyway, and the emotion only burns hotter with every injury he comes across.

His left knee’s probably the main reason Stiles called Peter.  While not completely severed like his arm, half the kneecap’s still been turned into a gaping cavity spilling yet more blood, as if some kind of scythe or even scimitar pierced into it sideways before yank outwards.

The arm’s the worst of it all though.  Peter hesitates for a few seconds before calling softly, “Stiles.  Stiles, I need you to lie down.”

Stiles groans, and when he opens his eyes, it looks like it’s taking all his effort.  The blood trickling from the gash on his forehead has dripped down far enough to clump his right eye’s lashes together.  “What?”

“Lie down,” Peter repeats patiently.  “That way you don’t have to hold your arm up while it… reattaches itself.”

Stiles heaves a sigh but he does start sliding to one side, and Peter helps him down the rest of the way until he’s flat on his back.  Peter pulls open the kit – that’s actually more of a bag with how big it is – he brought for a clean cloth and manages to wipe off at least some of the silver blood staining the area around the stump of Stiles’ elbow – Stiles spits a curse at him but holds still all the same – before he lines up the rest of that arm and leaves it to heal.

“So,” Peter begins conversationally as he sets about cleaning and bandaging Stiles’ knee.  “Are you going to tell me what you are?”

Stiles’ eyes have fallen shut again but he musters up enough energy to scoff.  “What, haven’t figured it out yet?”

Peter glances around the clearing again, attention lingering at the corpses.  He can’t actually see any heads from this angle, and even if he could, with all that blood, there’s a decent chance Stiles butchered them up enough for them to not even have any identifiable faces anymore.

“I don’t know,” He admits, only a little grudgingly.  “Although I’m assuming you were fighting your own kind.”

Stiles’ mouth twists a little like he’s tasted something sour.  “The children that’ve been on the news lately.  The butchered ones.  I recognized the symbols carved into them.  They’re house sigils.  It’s why I came out.  They’re not actually supposed to be here, they’re supposed to stay separate from the human realm, but I hear you get them once in a while.  Groups of them, hunting for sport.”

Peter’s lip curls into a slight snarl.  It doesn’t help that the knee he’s tending to won’t stop bleeding.  His hands are painted silver, and he’s running out of towels.  Also, the floral scent wafting at him from every direction makes him want to sneeze.  “It’s a good thing you killed them then.  Last I heard, Scott wanted to track them down and ask them to stop.”

Stiles snorts, then winces, his breathing coming in stutters for a few moments before evening out again.  “Ow, fuck my ribs.”

Peter debates leaving the knee and checking the ribs but if it hasn’t punctured a lung yet, it probably won’t.  He pulls out more bandages.  Only thing he can do now is strap the knee and hope Stiles is as resilient as his careless attitude seems to suggest he is.

“There were two sigils,” Peter recalls instead.  “One or the other on each of the bodies.  Were they supposed to be a taunt?  For the local Alpha?”

“No, they were just marks,” Stiles mutters.  “Can’t tell the difference otherwise.”

Peter frowns, not quite seeing the picture.  “So…”

Stiles sighs again, and his – relatively – uninjured arm comes up to sling over his eyes.  “They can’t tell the difference.  You all look the same to them.  Like how… bears and fish all look more or less the same to the average human, size and colouring aside.  And they were playing.  You know – whichever side kills the most wins.  And they can’t tell who wins if they don’t mark their game.”

Peter… has nothing to say to that.  That’s psychotic even by his standards.

He finishes wrapping up Stiles’ knee, frowning when blood immediately starts seeping through, but he leaves it alone in favour of checking the arm.  Stiles said it would put itself back together but Peter’s still surprised to find the elbow halfway knitted together already.  Maybe that’s why the knee is still so bad?  Worst injury first?

He turns his attention on the slash above Stiles’ eyebrow.  This one at least looks like something he can staunch.

“…Fae then?”  He enquires after a few minutes of dabbing at the head wound before taping a band-aid over it.

Stiles smirks sardonically, and his arm shifts a little so that amber – _almost gold_ – eyes can peer up at him.  “Fae.  Or, well, _they’re_ fae.  I’m half-and-half.”

“So your father is-”

“Yup, but he doesn’t know.  Mom never revealed what she was to him.  She told me she was so scared I would pop out with pointed ears and white skin when she gave birth to me.  Fortunately,” He wiggles his fingers, no longer clawed.  “Human genes won out.  Mostly.”

Mostly.  Stiles has perfectly normal rounded ears, although he’s always been very light-skinned.  Peter always thought he was just pale, paler than Lydia or Allison, never darkening or even getting sunburnt under the Californian sun either, but on hindsight, now that Peter knows what he is, it’s probably the fae genes in him at work.

“I’m guessing your mother wasn’t like most fae then,” Peter says.

Stiles’ hand twitches in a so-so movement.  “Kind of?  She didn’t think humans were just… dull-minded livestock like these assholes, she was a bit of a rebel too I think, and something about Dad attracted her enough for her to stay here for a while, even stay long enough to have me, but… she was still _fae_.  Fickle, and mischievous, with a _very_ long life.  She lost interest in playing regular human, and dad was boring her by the time I turned five – it’s probably actually _more_ of a shock that he didn’t bore her earlier.  So she faked an illness – she liked playing crazy, that was fun for her.  And then she… left.  Went back home to her world.”

He falls silent, and there’s something in his expression that says he can’t quite believe he just revealed as much as he did to Peter.  Peter pretends it doesn’t startle him just as much.

“She didn’t take you with her?”  He asks instead, watching Stiles carefully.

Stiles snorts.  “Well _obviously_.  Contrary to what it looks like,” He motions vaguely at his own blood.  “I’m still too human for the faerie realm.  Even if I’d been able to cross over, anyone who found out I was actually half-human probably would’ve lynched me.  And my mom for good measure.”  He shrugs.  “She said she was sorry.  And I survived okay.  Fae develop pretty quickly in the mental department.  I was already more or less capable of taking care of myself by the time I was nine, and Mom ‘died’ when I was ten, which was when Dad sort of… checked out.  So it was fine.”

Peter considers the fae-boy in front of him, subtly scenting the air and parsing emotions from the flower-sweet aroma.  Stiles… actually doesn’t seem that broken up about it, for all that his mother essentially abandoned him.  He smells a little resigned, and a little sad, but there’s no resentment or grief, as if _sorry_ was enough, and Peter wonders if that’s the fae in him too.

Stiles inhales deeply before letting the breath out in a whoosh, and then he starts pushing himself up into a sitting position.  “Anyway, I think my arm’s mostly healed.”

It is, Peter checks.  At the very least, Stiles can wriggle the fingers of that hand even though his arm still looks a flex away from snapping again.

“You still shouldn’t move yet,” Peter cautions.  “Don’t think I’ll carry you if you faint.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, and they both grin a little, familiarity finally flowing back between them.

“Gotta get rid of the bodies though,” Stiles nods at the corpses scattered around the clearing.  “It looks like it’s gonna rain soon so that’ll take care of the blood, but we should burn the bodies.”

“I’ll do it,” Peter grimaces a little but clambers to his feet.  “Wouldn’t do to have Scotty stumbling on such a suspicious scene.”  He pauses.  “Does _he_ know?”

Stiles shoots him an incredulous look.  “Are you kidding me?  I haven’t even told my dad.  Besides, Scott was human before-” He gestures at Peter.  “-and a kid, he wasn’t involved in the supernatural at all, which meant he wasn’t involved in anything fae, and _that’s_ always an excellent thing for a helpless human.  I thought about telling him after he became a werewolf, but then he got involved with Allison and – more importantly – the Argents, and we both know Scott wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret from her if my life depended on it, which it did because she and Gerard and their little band of hunters abducted and tortured me just because I was _Scott’s friend_.  You must know _something_ about the fae.  Can you imagine what they would’ve done if they knew what I was, and they got their hands on me?”

Peter absolutely can, and it’s a terrifying thought.  He may not know a lot about fae, but every story and legend and account he’s come across all have mentions of how powerful their magic is, how they can be bound and hurt and even _controlled_ by iron, even a few excerpts from a hunter’s bestiary that he managed to steal about how much their blood and organs and body parts are worth on the supernatural black market.

He looks around again.  “Are you sure the rain will wash the blood away?”

He glances back just in time to see Stiles’ expression go soft in a way that’s only become more frequent lately.

“I’m sure,” Stiles confirms.  “But it wouldn’t matter anyway.  Fae blood has to be fresh from a live body for it to do anything.  It loses its magic qualities once it’s out in the open like this.”

Peter nods, letting himself relax a little.  “I’ll take care of the bodies then.”  He levels a stern glare on Stiles.  “Don’t move.”

Stiles rolls his eyes again but doesn’t seem inclined to argue.  If nothing else, he looks too tired to put up much of a fight.

In the end, it takes about two hours for Peter to get a fire going and reduce all the bodies to ash.  Stiles was not kind with them.  Two of the fae were more pulp than flesh and bone, and another had her – his? – head torn clean off and staked to the ground with what looked to be his – her? – own sword.

It stirs something dark and vicious and satisfied in the depths of Peter’s chest, and his wolf preens proudly at the evidence of Stiles being more than capable of defending himself and destroying his enemies.

It might be a problem, he thinks, but at least it’s not one he has to concern himself with today.

At least for today, Stiles isn’t bored of him yet, and Peter is so very good at remaining interesting.

By the time he’s done, the skies have opened for a light drizzle, and Stiles is asleep when Peter gets back to him.  His knee finally looks like it’s on the mend, and the join of his elbow doesn’t seem quite as brittle anymore.

For a moment, Peter watches the boy sleep.

 _Fae_ , he thinks, reaching out to run a thumb along the moon-pale line of Stiles’ cheekbone, finally letting the awe surge through him.

Well.  There’s always been something magical about Stiles.

The rain begins falling harder, shaking Peter out of his reverie.  He shoulders his bag – now mostly empty of medical supplies but filled with fae weapons instead – before lifting Stiles into his arms.

Then he turns and heads home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> **Please leave a review on your way out.**


End file.
